Waiting
by Lunamon810
Summary: Does Gon even still care? (YinYang Pairing, genderbent Killua) HXH FF Hetero Contest Entry


**Hey guys, Lunamon810 here (you know, I really need to stop saying that at the beginning of like, EVERY story... and also, I haven't said that in a while, because you know, I haven't posted anything since the beginning of summer.) with... Um... What do I call this. An update? (Pssh, more like upgrade) Of this story, which I'd originally written for a Hunter X Hunter writing contest. Bushwah beta'd it for me, so thanks to them. Because I couldn't stand to read the original anymore, I considered taking it down for a while.** **And this is just like, so much better. I don't even know what I tried to accomplish originally.**

**But anyways.**

**Yes. Killua is female. It was required one of them be female for the contest. get over it man.  
**

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN HUNTER X HUNTER.**

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Killua guessed she had spent a week chained in the underground room with beige walls. A week of being _alone_, except for the times when Milluki decided to torture her for some deluded concept of revenge.

Why hadn't they let her go yet? This wasn't normal; this wasn't _sane_. Silva said it was okay for her to leave again, that it would be her choice to return from then on. Did he even know that she'd been kidnapped again?

The whip hit her again and again, and though she was practiced at hiding the pain, that didn't exactly stop it from hurting like _hell._ The whip was electrically charged, so her muscles tensed every time it hit. Another instance of being unable to control her body. She would have been pissed if she hadn't been busy trying to deal with the pain.

Furthering her humiliation, she was trained to _not react_ at any cost, so not only did she look like she was ignoring Milluki—making him even more desperate to punish her—but it was still a long time before she'd be able to induce unconsciousness. It was just like him to find and exploit a weakness in the Zoldyck training, claim that doing so _is_ training, and really be basing the whole disgusting ordeal on childish jealousy.

Despite the patent unfairness of the situation, she didn't dare try to escape. Either _a_, Silva was still in charge but didn't know about what was going on, _b_, the lunatics were running the asylum, or _c_, Silva had decided to condone this, which was just b with a little_ prior personal involvement_.

No, she wouldn't consider that. Last time around he'd granted her safe passage. Personal stability, right? The tendency of people in motion to stay in motion, and people at rest to stay at rest?

He was the one who taught her that; he of all people would know how to subvert her expectations—

_I refuse to believe that_.

Milluki was saying something, but it was all fuzzy. She'd lost too much blood at this point to make sense of his words. She thought longingly of the door right in front of her, but flinched when the whip hit her face.

Despite the constant screaming of half-heard insults, he seemed to be paying less attention to her than before. She closed her eyes.

When the pain was all she felt, it was both easier to block and harder to ignore.

Killua thought of the way Gon never thought of how something could go wrong, only how he—_and she_—could make it go right. The way he rushed into things, thought he was more powerful than he was—assumed it even—and still managed to survive. To learn.

_What if they did something to him?_ That was just irrational. Silva was interested in him, but as she was constantly being reminded, he wasn't in charge of this op. Illumi was only fixated on her—and she couldn't describe her relief when he didn't decide to "visit" her after her abduction. Milluki was also—as far as she could tell—fixated only on her.

She imagined Gon storming the mansion for her. She could hear the outer doors of the dungeon opening, see him ripping the whip out of Milluki's hands and forcing him back with it. He'd probably be a gentleman and break the chains, too—unabashedly a good thing when she wasn't sure she'd be able to walk out on her own.

A pleasant fantasy—too bad it made no sense whatsoever.

Gon wasn't going to save her; that was a stupid thought. Even if he did, they'd only capture her again, and again, and again... they would kill him long before he killed them. And surely, _surely_, even Gon wasn't so reckless as to bet his life against a period of freedom which could be as short as a few months?

Nevertheless, she strained her ears, tried to hear past the pain pounding in her blood—nothing. She couldn't even hear the spoiled brat yelling at her in the same room. How could she hear Gon's footsteps outside, light as those of a forest creature?

Her isolation actually gave her a bitter sense of hope. For all she knew, Gon was on the estate right now, charging in to find her and save her from this horrible place.

Then she thought of another problem; he had only seen her as a boy. Would he think she was—she nearly laughed aloud—"Killua's sister"?

Illumi held a Nen transformation that made her appear male. The heir was traditionally supposed to marry a female into the family to ensure that the Zoldyck line would continue, but with the scheme she and Silva had worked out, that would be irrelevant. She could stay single forever, one of her brothers would take care of the "kids" bit (Milluki would probably be eager to get to that particular piece of business), and no one would ever know.

Even if they wanted her to, she wouldn't give them a child. She'd find a way to get an abortion, or even kill it quickly after birth. She would never give her "family" another innocent life for them to experiment on.

No one had bothered to cut her hair, so it was longer than usual. Judging by the pain in her chest, the rest of her body had returned to female as well.

So that was it. She was only Killua's sister, now and forever. She knew that without help she would never be able to leave again; without Gon she would never even want to. She felt the whip hit her again, but the pain of losing Gon was so much worse. Nothing would ever be the bad. Not the whipping, the electricity, the burning, the freezing, the poison, none of it would _ever_ be that bad.

Milluki kept yelling at her, and she was fairly sure he was taunting her, but his words were becoming more and more vague as the whipping went along. So far, he'd called her a failure of a Zoldyck child, undeserving of her father's attention, and an "abomination". _How dare you leave, how dare you make friends?_ She had left, she had had friends, but now she was stuck here, chained up, being whipped, _alone._

How could it be that just a week ago it was the exact opposite? She was free, she was playing games with Gon, she was _with_ Gon.

So much changed in one night. Killua was sleeping closer to the window, but she knew that can't have mattered; Illumi would have easily found his way past such a trivial barrier. She was woken—_as she had been so many times before_—by Illumi's finger on her lips. Fearing for both Gon's life and her own, she was forced to accompany him back to the mansion and "consented" to having the chains placed on her arms and legs.

She had remained chained up until Milluki deigned to take interest in her perhaps half an hour later.

And for days on end, Gon had not come.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe her brothers were just influencing her thinking. Maybe Gon was trying to get in, but running into difficulties. Surely he was, he was probably fighting his very best to come in and save her and take her away from all of this. To take her back from her cruel family. Then they could go back to their normal, fun lives. Trying to find Gon's dad. Together.

The steel doors slammed open, and Killua opened her eyes in dull surprise. At first she thought the boy in the green shorts was a delusion, a mad dream she had projected onto the waking world. She watched, disconnected, as he stomped straight over to Milluki and took the whip from his hands.

Then Gon-_it had to be Go_n—struck Milluki with the whip. He turned and ran. _Ha. He'd not survive two days in the kind of training the heir has to go through_. Gon turned around, and followed her eyes to the key hanging from a hook next to the door.

He looked down at her cuffs as he unlocked them, and caught her as she fell unresisting from the chains. "Killua, I'm sorry it took so long. There was a storm, and it took three days just to get here. Then I had to get past Kanaria, and the butlers, and convince your parents I wasn't going to do anything stupid. But it's okay, I'm here now. Are you okay?" he asked, finally looking her in the eyes.

Killua smiled weakly. "I am now. It took you long enough, idiot," she said, just the sight of Gon giving her the strength to a least imitate her normal self. "But I guess if you had to fight past all of them, you have _some_ excuse for taking so long."

Gon smiled. "Glad to know you're okay. Though you don't look okay, Killua."

Killua froze for a second. Was he about to point out how she looked more feminine?

"You have a lot of burn marks and scars... more than before. We should get you out of here and get you to a doctor immediately."

Killua nodded, her head barely moving. "Let's get out of here."

So Gon did still cherish their friendship. He did come to save her. Also, he didn't seem to care that she looked more feminine now. Maybe she'd let her hair stay that way, now that Illumi wasn't going to use Nen on her.

Though it might well shock their other friends who didn't know she was a she, like Kurapika and Leorio. Particularly Leorio._ If that money-grubber tries to fondle me even once, I'll kick his ass to the moon._

Oh, who cared what they thought of her. No matter what, she had Gon's friendship.

And maybe one day, she could get Gon to realize that they weren't limited to being _just_ friends.


End file.
